Gallery: Ars goes behind the scenes with the Caterham F1 racing team

On Friday, Ars was invited behind the scenes of the Caterham Formula 1 racing team at the Circuit of the Americas in Austin. The invite came courtesy of Dell, which has heavily partnered with the Caterham team. The OEM was very eager to show off the ways in which it's making its IT experience work trackside.

Caterham F1 is a much smaller racing concern than the big F1 players like Red Bull or Ferrari. The British F1 team has only about 400 employees, and the key to remaining competitive is that old corporate buzzword, efficiency.

Surprisingly, a great deal of the stuff that Caterham leans on would be quite familiar to just about any enterprise sysadmin. We spoke for a while with Caterham trackside engineer Anthony Smith and Caterham F1 team CIO Bill Peters, and they both rattled off a list of names and technologies at home in any traditional datacenter: Dell PowerEdge servers, VSphere for server virtualization, and SSD-filled EqualLogic storage arrays to keep things running.

The Circuit of the Americas was inexplicably fog-shrouded when I arrived, though we were assured by the team that the fog would burn off quickly.

Lee Hutchinson

The grandstands and general admission areas weren't as packed as on race day, but a large number of people turned out to watch the practice laps, many more so than when Ars was at COTA in September.

Lee Hutchinson

The Caterham pit, before practice.

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Sadly, we weren't allowed up onto the observation tower.

Lee Hutchinson

A bit after 10am, the various teams' cars started to pull out of the garages and cruise down pit lane as the track went green.

Lee Hutchinson

The sound of a 2.4l V8 at 17,000 rpm was ludicrously loud.

Lee Hutchinson

More cars creeping toward the pit lane exit. The picture doesn't convey the sound—it sounded like most of the drivers had their gearboxes in neutral and were burying their right feet to the firewalls to get everything up to operating temperature.

Lee Hutchinson

Open wheeled cars evolve as the rules governing their design change, but nothing else says speed quite like a Formula 1 car.

Lee Hutchinson

Every F1 team has to design and build their cars themselves, but they all sport the same Pirelli racing tires. The orange text and graphics on these tires indicate they're the hardest of the four possible compounds.

Lee Hutchinson

Once on the track, the drivers began to ramp up their velocities. Here, even a shutter speed of 1/500 doesn't quite freeze the F1 car's motion.

Lee Hutchinson

Next came about 45 minutes of zooming about as the teams and drivers worked on their set up for the track.

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Experimenting a bit with trying to freeze the car in front of a moving background.

Lee Hutchinson

Probably the best shot I was able to take of one of the cars flying past the paddock.

Lee Hutchinson

The Caterham pit crew springs into their elaborately choreographed and ridiculously fast dance. Now that refueling is not allowed during the race, an average F1 pit stop takes around 3.5 seconds. The white logos and graphics on the tires mean they're the medium compound.

Lee Hutchinson

By the time the first practice session was over, the day had fully cleared and temperatures were in the high 70s—not unusual for Austin in November.

Lee Hutchinson

In between practice sessions, we were all brought down for a "pit walk," where we got to amble around pit lane and peek into the teams' garages.

Lee Hutchinson

The Caterham pit area and garage.

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The Caterham pit, with the wheel guns and other assorted equipment stowed.

Lee Hutchinson

Most of the teams had spare car components standing outside their garages ready for use. This is a rack of Caterham carbon-fiber nose and front wing assemblies.

Lee Hutchinson

Detail on a Caterham nosecone, complete with bugs.

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Caterham had both cars up on the stands in their garages, and each was being worked on by the trackside engineers. This is driver Giedo van der Garde's car in the left bay.

Lee Hutchinson

The right bay contained Charles Pic's car.

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Another view of Pic's car.

Lee Hutchinson

One of the Dell representatives brought over a functional but non-race version of the cars' button-studded steering wheels. It was incredibly light, being made from carbon fiber. F1 steering wheels can cost upwards of $50,000.

Lee Hutchinson

Detail view of the steering wheel.

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The view up the asphalt out of pit lane and onto the track. Unfortunately, I was not sitting in an actual F1 car when taking this picture, but this is about what you'd see as you pulled out of the pits and got ready to take your laps.

Lee Hutchinson

Peters described the relationship with Dell in glowing terms. The Caterham F1 team had a very short inception, and on the IT side of the house, Peters decided to partner with Dell as the technology provider due to Dell's ability to provide hardware and services across an entire range of different areas. To save time, money, and weight, all of the computing for the Caterham trackside garage is run out of a half-rack containing three Dell PowerEdge servers running VSphere on a pair of EqualLogic iSCSI disk arrays. VSphere provides about 30 virtual hosts during the race. The servers are used by the track engineers and also by Caterham personnel back in the UK.

"At the higher level, we're doing the same as other teams, but we've adopted things they've not. We decided to virtualize everything from the get-go," Peters continued. "Traditionally, trackside IT for Formula 1 is physical servers serving one purpose as simply as possible—less chance of failures. A lot of the other teams transport about five racks of equipment—we move half of one rack." Because the team sets up and tears down their entire garage between every race and must transport the entire show all across the world, there are very real cost savings in reducing the amount of gear that must be shipped.

Caterham's cars on the track spew a constant torrent of wireless data back to the engineers in the garage, and each bit is carefully analyzed and then archived. The amount of data from a single car can be as much as a gigabyte per lap; having remote engineers connect in via Remote Desktop and look at the data housed trackside is much, much easier than trying to transmit gigabytes and gigabytes of data back from the track to the UK.

The data being analyzed isn't just used to determine gross vehicle settings, either—both Peters and Smith described a highly data-driven decision-making process where for every race lap run, the team simulates as many as 20,000 variations and outcomes on a small Dell HPC cluster. The simulations are used to firm up overall race strategy, so that the team can direct the drivers on exactly how to drive.

We were given a garage tour (during which we were unfortunately not allowed to take any pictures), and the level of security was extremely high—we had to proceed through multiple guarded checkpoints to get anywhere near the garage area, and it took more to reach the garage. With a trio of pretty standard-looking Dell servers and disk arrays sitting in a small closet, I had to ask: what does the Caterham team do if a part fails?

Smith laughed and explained that part failures happen the same as with any other enterprise gear. Caterham pays for four-hour "on site" servicing, but they have replacement components couriered instead to whatever hotel the team is staying in because of security.

IT tends to be IT the world over—whether it's racing or aerospace or health care, the large trends are mostly the same. Caterham is dealing with the same pressures to virtualize and use less equipment more efficiently as are many non-race-car-related IT departments. Unfortunately, I wasn't able to actually drive one of the cars to see if Caterham's virtualization-heavy, data-driven approach to racing could improve my ability to nail an apex at high speeds.

There's always next year, though.

Listing image by Lee Hutchinson

Lee Hutchinson
Lee is the Senior Technology Editor at Ars and oversees gadget, automotive, IT, and culture content. He also knows stuff about enterprise storage, security, and manned space flight. Lee is based in Houston, TX. Emaillee.hutchinson@arstechnica.com//Twitter@Lee_Ars

I love F1. LOVE F1, more than any man should love an inanimate object...but after the compound change after Silverstone this season has been effing boring. I am hoping that we have a bit more character and surprise next year with the Formula change and NOT because that troll Eccelstone makes some hair brained demand to make the racing more exciting.

Lee, with your panned shots of the cars I find between 1/40th and 1/100th shutter speed to work pretty good but I guess it may depend on your distance from the car and the speed they are traveling. Make sure that you are tracking the car well before the moment you want to capture and follow through after the shots for best results.

Smith laughed and explained that part failures happen the same as with any other enterprise gear. Caterham pays for four-hour "on site" servicing, but they have replacement components couriered instead to whatever hotel the team is staying in because of security

Wouldn't it be easier to have 1 spare of everything? It's only a half rack, what happens if one of those PowerEdge servers die a few hours before a race? I'm sure one of the 400 staff would know how change faulty memory/psu's/whole servers etc.

I'm an avid motorsports fan but don't really follow F1. I tried to find out how many employees my favourite teams have but didn't get anywhere. I'm sure it's a _lot_ less than that though.

I wonder why? Perhaps an F1 team is required to provide stuff that is provided by the race event organisers elsewhere?

For example the article talks about racks of servers. In V8 supercars I'm pretty sure the race event organisers provide all of that stuff, and every team has exactly the same telemetry available (I've heard F1 drivers comment that they wished they had the same stuff in F1 too, so apparently the telemetry is pretty good). Best of all, they also provide some of that real-time telemetry data to viewers via an iPad app. So you can see, up to the second, where your favourite driver is right now and how many pit stops and which driver is behind the wheel (if it's a two driver endurance event).

I guess F1 teams also fabricate a lot of their own parts... while I think other race teams usually outsource that. For example in V8SC even the biggest team, (red bull), has their engines built by someone else.

I suspect that a good measure of the 'true' F1 fan is how they feel about Bernie. Good call.

Then there is the constant whining about the cost of F1 racing, followed by announcements that the formula is changing, sometimes drastically, requiring, you guessed it, much more money to implement. Grrrr...

Wouldn't it be easier to have 1 spare of everything? It's only a half rack, what happens if one of those PowerEdge servers die a few hours before a race? I'm sure one of the 400 staff would know how change faulty memory/psu's/whole servers etc.

They're actually capable of doing everything they need to do with two servers, and they can even go down to a single one without many issues. They're operating with redundancy, just like any mission-critical deployment. The difference is that the 4-hour replacement parts can't even get into the parking lot during a race due to security and sheer traffic—so, spares go to the hotel and a team member runs them over to the garage.

I love F1. LOVE F1, more than any man should love an inanimate object...but after the compound change after Silverstone this season has been effing boring. I am hoping that we have a bit more character and surprise next year with the Formula change and NOT because that troll Eccelstone makes some hair brained demand to make the racing more exciting.

Idiot.

There were six, count'em SIX tire blowouts at Silverstone.

You make it sound as if changing compounds was a capricious decision from Ecclestone, not a pure safety issue. Drivers were threatening to boycott those tires.

F1 has actually been doing 3D printing for about two decades, apparently. Practically everything except the engine is made by each team. Only the factory teams make their own engines. Everybody else buys the engines from the factory teams.

In terms of number of employees, you have to figure in all the team principles, mechanics, and engineers at each event. Include all the IT, data crunchers and analysts, strategists, and even the personal assistants for all the drivers and head honchos. Then you've got all the employees back at the factory. These are the folks who design and build the cars and components. There are also a lot of support personnel who support the race by analyzing the telemetry in near real time, sometimes halfway around the world. These folks are supported by another group of analysts. Then you've got the people who run the business side of things. Contracts with the drivers and their managers, people who deal with the sponsors, people who deal with the FIA and Bernie Ecclestone's Formula One Management, payroll, advertising, chefs and staff to feed everybody, etc. Given all that, 400 is actually a small team compared to the more established teams who have more money to spend. Speaking of which, I really feel sorry for the team that places dead last in the constructor's championship. Only the top 10 of the 11 teams get prize money from Bernie. So the last place team is at a severe disadvantage for the following season, and that lack of additional funding means less money to spend on staff and R&D.

I'm an avid motorsports fan but don't really follow F1. I tried to find out how many employees my favourite teams have but didn't get anywhere. I'm sure it's a _lot_ less than that though.

I wonder why? Perhaps an F1 team is required to provide stuff that is provided by the race event organisers elsewhere?

For example the article talks about racks of servers. In V8 supercars I'm pretty sure the race event organisers provide all of that stuff, and every team has exactly the same telemetry available (I've heard F1 drivers comment that they wished they had the same stuff in F1 too, so apparently the telemetry is pretty good). Best of all, they also provide some of that real-time telemetry data to viewers via an iPad app. So you can see, up to the second, where your favourite driver is right now and how many pit stops and which driver is behind the wheel (if it's a two driver endurance event).

I guess F1 teams also fabricate a lot of their own parts... while I think other race teams usually outsource that. For example in V8SC even the biggest team, (red bull), has their engines built by someone else.

Formula One is a completely different animal. With the exception of the engine and some other bits, each team fields a car built entirely on its own. There are no 'customer' cars, no standard chassis as in IndyCar. The cars are all-new each year as well. You don't modify last year's car and expect to be remotely competitive.

The reality in F1 is that the technology employed is quite often an order of magnitude above anything else. Their budgets are insane (some years ago Toyota spent $300 million in one season and didn't so much as smell the podium, much less a win).

As badass as a V8 SuperCar is, next to an F1 car it's rather simplistic. That's not a ding, just reality.

To give a visual idea of the massive difference between say, a Porsche GT3 and a modern F1 car check this:

iFixit rates the Caterham steering wheel a repairability score of 9/10. Marking it down 1 point for requiring 3 different sizes of Allen Key and using stickers to obscure the bolt holes near the Entry and KERS rotary switches.

I'm an avid motorsports fan but don't really follow F1. I tried to find out how many employees my favourite teams have but didn't get anywhere. I'm sure it's a _lot_ less than that though.

I wonder why? Perhaps an F1 team is required to provide stuff that is provided by the race event organisers elsewhere?

For example the article talks about racks of servers. In V8 supercars I'm pretty sure the race event organisers provide all of that stuff, and every team has exactly the same telemetry available (I've heard F1 drivers comment that they wished they had the same stuff in F1 too, so apparently the telemetry is pretty good). Best of all, they also provide some of that real-time telemetry data to viewers via an iPad app. So you can see, up to the second, where your favourite driver is right now and how many pit stops and which driver is behind the wheel (if it's a two driver endurance event).

I guess F1 teams also fabricate a lot of their own parts... while I think other race teams usually outsource that. For example in V8SC even the biggest team, (red bull), has their engines built by someone else.

Formula One is a completely different animal. With the exception of the engine and some other bits, each team fields a car built entirely on its own. There are no 'customer' cars, no standard chassis as in IndyCar. The cars are all-new each year as well. You don't modify last year's car and expect to be remotely competitive.

The reality in F1 is that the technology employed is quite often an order of magnitude above anything else. Their budgets are insane (some years ago Toyota spent $300 million in one season and didn't so much as smell the podium, much less a win).

As badass as a V8 SuperCar is, next to an F1 car it's rather simplistic. That's not a ding, just reality.

To give a visual idea of the massive difference between say, a Porsche GT3 and a modern F1 car check this:

For example the article talks about racks of servers. In V8 supercars I'm pretty sure the race event organisers provide all of that stuff, and every team has exactly the same telemetry available (I've heard F1 drivers comment that they wished they had the same stuff in F1 too, so apparently the telemetry is pretty good). Best of all, they also provide some of that real-time telemetry data to viewers via an iPad app. So you can see, up to the second, where your favourite driver is right now and how many pit stops and which driver is behind the wheel (if it's a two driver endurance event).

The telemetry you're talking about is a tiny fraction of the info the F1 teams collect. In addition to all the standard stuff (speed, gear, engine rpm, gas/brake position, etc) they are also collecting data from pretty much all of the sensors on the car. A bit of googling found an article from a couple years back that said there are around 120 sensors measuring over 500 different parameters. This article mentions that for the Caterham team (much lower budget than the top teams) they collect about 1 gigabyte of data per lap. The top teams are probably collecting and processing even more.

Honestly, the Caterhams aren't even in the same game as the top teams. They are generally 3-4 seconds slower per lap, although at least some of that gap (probably 20-40%) is the drivers.

By rule, each team has to design and build its own car. They can source some parts (brake rotors, pads, etc.) and must use others (all teams run the same ECM, to keep teams from implementing a traction control system in the code), but the aero design, research, some testing and fabrication of the individual carbon-fiber parts is pretty much in-house.

At the track you usually see about 30 or so people (2 drivers, 4-5 people on the wall handling communications and strategy, as many as 20 team members in the pit for the pitstops and some PR handlers in the garage). Then add some people (like the IT folks) out of sight, and they could easily have 40+ at the track. A 1:10 ratio field-to-support isn't the worst I've heard of.

It is hard to find solid numbers, but in 2008 it was believed that McLaren and Ferrari employed about 1000, while Williams had about 600. 400 sounds "reasonable" given those numbers.

I love F1. LOVE F1, more than any man should love an inanimate object...but after the compound change after Silverstone this season has been effing boring. I am hoping that we have a bit more character and surprise next year with the Formula change and NOT because that troll Eccelstone makes some hair brained demand to make the racing more exciting.

Idiot.

There were six, count'em SIX tire blowouts at Silverstone.

You make it sound as if changing compounds was a capricious decision from Ecclestone, not a pure safety issue. Drivers were threatening to boycott those tires.

...which had nothing to do with the tires but EVERYTHING to do with the teams mounting them incorrectly despite repeated directions by Pirelli.

Honestly, the Caterhams aren't even in the same game as the top teams. They are generally 3-4 seconds slower per lap, although at least some of that gap (probably 20-40%) is the drivers.

Which is why I never watch F1. In V8SC the best driver will be a split second faster than the worst guy on the track and anybody in the first 10 cars in qualifying has a real chance of winning the race.

Do the teams all use different wireless frequencies and protocols for data or is there a standard F1 network they all multiplex on? With that much data literally flying around I would expect burst transmissions at points on the track instead of having data continuously transmitted.

And is it one way or two way? Back on the 90's Williams did that naughty thing with active suspension controlled from the garage

Nice pictures. Good panning shots take practice and some luck, but the results can be fantastic. I had a few shots from F1 at Indy where I could tell the driver's blood type (name, nationality and blood type are on a plaque on the left behind the driver).

I don't know if I'll ever make it out to COTA, but I'm still envious of your weekend.

Oh, a monopod can help a lot with panning smoothly, but you'll soon have to replace the rubber on its foot with a small superball. That lasts for _years_.

Do the teams all use different wireless frequencies and protocols for data or is there a standard F1 network they all multiplex on? With that much data literally flying around I would expect burst transmissions at points on the track instead of having data continuously transmitted.

Given the secrecy the teams invest in when they can, either different freqs or encryption is used, if not both!

Quote:

And is it one way or two way? Back on the 90's Williams did that naughty thing with active suspension controlled from the garage

FIA banned controlling bits on the car from the pits a few years back. Now the drivers have to enter codes via the steering wheel on instructions from the pits. We've heard radio communications to drivers this year including "Magic ##" (with numbers there, not octothorps) and today there was "Fail" some number, and another driver was told at one point to shut down KERS and restart it in an attempt to get it working again. Working with tech support at 160+mph must be loads of fun.

Honestly, the Caterhams aren't even in the same game as the top teams. They are generally 3-4 seconds slower per lap, although at least some of that gap (probably 20-40%) is the drivers.

Which is why I never watch F1. In V8SC the best driver will be a split second faster than the worst guy on the track and anybody in the first 10 cars in qualifying has a real chance of winning the race.

32 races so far this year, and 16 drivers have won at least one race.

It's interesting how personal taste works. I find racing absolutely boring when the teams are all evenly matched like that. It's what I like about F1 -- that something matters more than just random luck this week. The ultimate yawnfest for me was IROC. Give every driver the exact same car, send them out on an oval track. YAWN!

(NB: Some years IROC did a single road course race, so most races in a season and over the course of the series were ovals.)

now now i dont get the hate on. the COTA is an awesome track - and whether its is F1 the porsche GT3s or the V8SCs (back in 2015 provided no dating clashes - wish there wasnt such a long wait from this year!) all formats have something to give the petrolhead.

i have to say i am loving the first season of COTF/NG regs for the V8s; there is only 6 points in it for 1-2 in the championship, so if you can watch the last races of the season i recommend you do, they promise to be a cracker. no ovals, Philip Island then a street circuit - teams are 'evenly matched' but theres absolutely no knowing what will happen on race day - driver mistakes and attrition are costly (look at a highlight reel for the Gold Coast weekend and 'evenly matched' was anything but boring).

and for am photography i thought those were some nice shots; both motion shots and looking up the hill. our Ch7 got a look at the lookout that you missed tho - the view from up there is bloody good. wangle your way up there sometime if you ever can (with a camera!) - it will be worth it.

I believe ARS has a fundamental misunderstanding about what 'behind the scenes' means. It normal means going where regular people can't normally go. Looking at the pictures, there are only 2 pictures that can't easily be taken by the general population, namely, the pictures of the steering wheel.

I love F1. LOVE F1, more than any man should love an inanimate object...but after the compound change after Silverstone this season has been effing boring. I am hoping that we have a bit more character and surprise next year with the Formula change and NOT because that troll Eccelstone makes some hair brained demand to make the racing more exciting.

Idiot.

There were six, count'em SIX tire blowouts at Silverstone.

You make it sound as if changing compounds was a capricious decision from Ecclestone, not a pure safety issue. Drivers were threatening to boycott those tires.

...which had nothing to do with the tires but EVERYTHING to do with the teams mounting them incorrectly despite repeated directions by Pirelli.

....and that was the first time in racing history the teams sought an advantage by ignoring guidelines. *facepalm*